Tehran Says Diplomacy Needed To Resolve Baku-Yerevan Conflict

“You don’t have to be a historian or a researcher to understand the horrors of the Holocaust — you have to be a human being,” he said during a visit to the Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Poland on Monday in reaction to Raisi’s remarks. 

Quizzed over the Jewish holocaust and Israel’s “right to exist,” Raisi told CBS News that “Historical events should be investigated by researchers and historians. There are some signs that it happened. If so, they should allow it to be investigated and researched,” and evading the question by bringing up the rights of Palestinians “forced to leave their homes and motherland.” He also said Israel’s accords with some Arab states meant those states “were stabbing the very idea of Palestine in the back.”

“Anyone who lies and denies the painful and solid truth of history, easily lies today, and will naturally lie in the future,” Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Kohavi added, referring to Raisi. 

“This is another reminder that such people should not be allowed to possess any capacity of any kind for development of weapons of mass destruction,” the IDF noted in reference to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

"We stand here today on human ground, while our military boots carry the ground of Israel, the country we protect. We created a home, not just for the Jewish people, but for those who worked with us — Druze, Christians and Muslims."

Mahsa Amini’s death in the custody of hijab enforcement patrols, has shaken the country, with reports saying police forces fired at protesters in Divandarreh, where at least 10 people were injured, and Saqqez in the Kurdistan province on Monday. People in the capital Tehran and the central city of Esfahan (Isfahan) are also holding on-and-off protests with bouts of clashes with security forces. 

Business owners in the cities with large Kurdish populations such as Baneh, Marivan, her hometown Saqqez, and Kurdistan provincial capital have staged a general strike to protest the murder of Mahsa Amini, also known as Zhina, announcing that they will continue the strikes for several days despite warnings by the authorities. 

Videos sent to Iran International show police using tear gas against people while many citizens have opened the doors of their houses to shelter the protesters. 

In one video, a group of students stand outside the office of their university’s cleric, most probably the representative of the Supreme Leader at the university, chanting “Mullahs Must Get Lost” as the cleric is watching them through his window.

While authorities are lying about the circumstances of Mahsa Amini’s death and defending the Islamic religious patrols, Tehran’s “morality” police chief Colonel Mirzaei has been “suspended” until further investigation into Mahsa’s death. 

In two television interviews ahead of leaving Monday for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, where he is due to speak this week, Raisi stressed Tehran’s lack of trust in both Washington and European states. This, he said, followed US withdrawal from the 2015 deal – the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – and Europe’s failure to support Iran economically in the face of US ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions.

Speaking last Tuesday to America’s CBS in Tehran in an interview broadcast over ten minutes Sunday, and to Qatar’s al-Jazeera in a half-hour slot Friday in Samarkand during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, Raisi said that while Iran wanted to expand trade globally with sanctions lifted it was ready to emphasize links with other countries facing sanctions.

“If there were guarantees, then the Americans could not withdraw from the deal,” Raisi said. “The Americans broke their promises, they did it unilaterally…We cannot trust the Americans because of the behavior we have already seen from them.”

CBS billed the interview as Raisi’s “first with a western reporter” while Raisi might receive more media coverage while in New York.

Meeting Biden ‘not beneficial’

Asked about Iranian-Americans detained in Iran, Raisi referred to Iranian nationals imprisoned in the US “because they tried to circumvent sanctions.” He reiterated talks “between the two countries” on this “humanitarian issue” were possible aside from the nuclear talks.

Raisi ruled out a “face to face” meeting in New York with President Joe Biden, which he said “would not be beneficial” as Iran had “not witnessed in reality” any changes since the administration of President Donald Trump, who in 2018 withdrew the US from the nuclear agreement and imposed ‘maximum pressure.’ But Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani on Monday kept the door open to contacts during the UN summit.

Interviewer Lesley Stahl quizzed Raisi over 1988 prison executions, at time when the president was deputy prosecutor in Tehran. Raisi dismissed “allegations and claims made by a terrorist group” – the Mujahideen-e Khalq, whose members were most of those executed. CBS highlighted Amnesty International calling the executions as “a crime against humanity.”

Quizzed over the Jewish holocaust and Israel’s “right to exist,” Raisi evaded the question by bringing up the rights of Palestinians “forced to leave their homes and motherland,” and said Israel’s accords with some Arab states meant those states “were stabbing the very idea of Palestine in the back.” He also called for “justice” over the “heinous crime” of the US 2020 killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.

Building confidence

Raisi’s interview with Jazeera focused on Iran’s strategy in looking to expand ties with other SCO members – China, India, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Russia Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – to create “balance” and as a bulwark against current or future US sanctions.

“Those who are violators of their commitment, they need to build confidence again,” he said. Asked over 40 years of poor relations with the US, Raisi evoked US support for the ‘terrorist’ MEK, for Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 war, its 1988 shooting down of the civilian Iran Air Flight 655, and decades of sanctions – all of which he called a “very long list.”

In fact, the Soviet Union rendered greater support to Iraq with large arms shipments, but the Islamic Republic maintained ties with Moscow and later expanded relations. Also, there is no evidence of the US administrations having helped the MEK, although some US lawmakers support the organization.

The medical documents and dozens of exclusive images sent to Iran International by a hacktivist group vividly show a skull fracture on the right side of her head caused by a severe trauma to the skull, which corroborate earlier accounts by her family and doctors about her being hit several times on the head, proving that the Iranian police's claim that she suffered a heart attack was untrue.

Images of her chest show bilateral diffuse alveolar hemorrhage and damage due to aspiration pneumonia, secretion retention and superimposed infection. Doctors say the results are compatible with acute respiratory distress syndrome due to brain trauma.

The 22-year-old woman’s death in custody by the hijab police has led to indignation among Iranians and several anti-regime protests in different cities.

A source from the hospital where she died told Iran International on Saturday that her brain tissue was crushed after "multiple blows" to the head, adding that Amini was taken to Kasra Hospital in capital Tehran while she was not responsive and brain dead.

The source added that her lungs were filled with blood when she was transferred to the hospital and it was clear that she “could not be revived." 

This source emphasized that Mahsa's condition "was such that she could not be saved nor was surgery possible because her brain tissue was seriously damaged and it was clear that the patient was not injured by a single punch and must have received many blows to her head."

Asked by Leslie Stahl if he regrets his role in a death commission that executed up to 5,000 political prisoners, Raisi simply answered that they were “terrorists.”

“They were assassinating people and what happened to them was exactly proportionate to what they did,” the Iranian president said.

Most of the prisoners were young members of the Mojahedin Khalq (MEK) group that participated in the 1979 revolution and supported the establishment of the Islamic Republic but soon began opposing the clerics who took full control of the new government.

The organization did engage in acts of terror against officials, but the prisoners who were summarily executed had already received prison sentences and were serving their jail terms.

The United States has sanctioned Raisi and other members of the governing elite for human rights violations, but the Biden Administration decided to issue a visa to the Raisi to go the New York for the United Nations General Assembly starting this week.

American Iranians are preparing for a protest outside the UN headquarters in New York on Wednesday when Raisi is scheduled to speak. This is his first visit to a Western country as president and first UN appearance. He said in the interview that he will not meet or speak with President Joe Biden. “I don’t think to meet with him or have a discussion would be beneficial.”